Russian Fairy Tales

Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by Ralston




Russian Fairy Tales is a collection of nearly 600 fairy and folktales, collected and published by Alexander Afanasyev between 1855 and 1863. His literary work was explicitly modeled after Grimm's Fairy Tales. Vladimir Propp drew heavily on this collection for his analyses in his Morphology of the Folktale.




William Ralston Shedden-Ralston (1828-1889), born William Shedden and later known as William Ralston, was a noted British scholar and translator of Russia and Russian.




Born on 4 April 1828 in York Terrace, Regent's Park, London, he was the only son of W. P. Ralston Shedden, who made his fortune as a merchant in Calcutta and set up home in Palmira Square, Brighton, when he returned to England. William spent most of his early years there. Together with three or four other boys, he studied under the Rev. John Hogg of Brixham, Devonshire, until he went to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1846, where he graduated with a BA in 1850.